"Crack!" Under that single punch, the waterfall, nearly ten meters wide, was shattered to pieces.

The cascade that had been thundering down only moments before fell abruptly silent. For more than ten meters above, the water simply vanished, leaving a hollow pocket of empty air.

"The fifth punch!" Surprise lit Tang Yan's eyes. He hadn't expected his strength to break through in the very midst of cultivation.

Stepping out from the waterfall, Tang Yan drew a deep breath and stood at the bank, beginning to practice Thousand Mountains Fist. He wanted to see just how much power the technique could unleash now that it was free of the waterfall's weight.

"Bang!" The first punch tore out, and a dull, splitting crack rolled through the air around him. The currents scattered outward. At Yellow Rank Ninth Grade, the power behind it was formidable.

Feeling the weight of that first blow, a faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. It seemed his days beneath the waterfall hadn't been wasted after all.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"

Without pause, he hammered out four more punches in a row.

Thousand Mountains Fist was a technique in which each punch overwhelmed the last. Without the waterfall's resistance, every blow rang louder and struck harder than the one before.

After the fifth punch, Tang Yan didn't hesitate for an instant. He twisted his feet again, turned his body slightly, and borrowing the force of that spin, drove a savage punch forward.

"Bang!" The air around him warped. His fist seemed ready to rip the space before it apart, roaring as it surged upward, and then everything burst at once, releasing a deafening blast.

His pace never slowed. His body spun once more, and he sent another punch driving forward.

This time he felt the vortex in his Dantian draining away in a rush.

His arm hurtled toward its target as though it contained power ready to erupt.

The seventh punch!

"Boom!" A great roar erupted, and dust flew up all around.

Tang Yan stared at the ground before him, his eyes going wide.

He had actually punched a crater into the earth in front of him.

"Damn!" It was a long moment before those two words finally left his mouth.

Once he'd settled, Tang Yan took stock of where his strength stood.

As he was now, even against a Black Rank First Grade expert, he'd have the power to fight.

Fresh off his breakthrough, Tang Yan was itching to find someone to test his strength against. Watching the sun sink toward the mountains, a smile crept across his lips.

Wolf King, tonight it's your turn.

The sun dropped behind the western peaks.

Tang Yan was chewing on roasted boar to recover his strength when a wolf's howl drifted in from far off.

"Why's that pack out so early today?" he wondered.

"Awooo-"

"Awooo, awooo-" More howls followed.

Gnawing on the boar leg, Tang Yan caught the raw grief and fury in those cries, and his expression shifted. He tossed the leg aside and darted toward the source of the sound.

In all the days he'd spent tormenting the pack, he'd never heard wails so anguished. Something must have happened to them.

Light as a wildcat, he wove through the mountains, and the howls grew only more wretched as he went.

When he arrived, he parted the thick grass and peered through. By the moonlight he saw five or six bodies sprawled across the ground, and beside them two people locked in battle with the pack.

He drew in the scent on the air, and his chest tightened. There was poison powder in it.

Holding his breath, he pulled an Antidote Pill from his robes and swallowed it, then studied the scene in silence.

When Tang Yan had first run into the pack, it had numbered around thirteen hundred. After all these days of slaughter, seven or eight hundred remained, and he'd cut down nearly half of the second-order wolves among them.

Reading the scene carefully, Tang Yan guessed these people had come prepared. Unless he was mistaken, their quarry was the Wolf King.

They'd meant to use the poison called Essence-Scattering Powder, so that the giant wolves would breathe it in and lose all their strength.

But from the look of things, the plan hadn't fully worked. Only some of the wolves had been robbed of their fighting power.

He couldn't say how strong the dead had been, but the two still standing were clearly no weaklings. The woman looked to be at Black Rank Second Grade, the man at Yellow Rank Ninth Grade.

Counting carefully, Tang Yan saw a hundred or so wolves left, most of them first-order, a handful of second-order giants mixed in. And the silver-white Wolf King lay among them now, looking as though it too had fallen for the group's trap.

"Chang Ying, cover me and handle the first-order wolves around us. Finish the battle quickly and strike down the Wolf King directly!" The woman gave a sharp cry and swept her longsword forward as she charged.

"Right!" The man wasted no time. Hefting his heavy saber, he pressed close behind her, cutting down the first-order giants.

The giant wolves fell one after another, and the two of them closed in on the Wolf King.

"Awooo-" The few giants guarding the Wolf King threw back their heads and howled, thick with grief and hatred.

Tang Yan's gaze snapped to one side.

An arrow had sliced through the grass, flying straight at the Wolf King.

Poisoned and without the strength left to fight, the Wolf King could only watch the arrow come. A wolf at its side hurled itself up and threw its body across the shaft, and the Wolf King barely escaped death.

"Awooo-" The Wolf King let out a mournful cry.

Before it could react, more arrows came whistling in, aimed at the Wolf King and the wolves around it.

The arrows carried biting True Qi and drove into the vitals of several wolves. The Wolf King took one through the throat and lay twitching on the ground, plainly with little life left.

It had all happened in a heartbeat. The surviving man and woman both froze, then tightened their grip on their weapons and turned toward the side.

"Who's there!" the woman demanded.

"Heh heh. Miss Wan, it's been a while." A coarse laugh rolled out from the distance, and the faces of the pair went cold in an instant.

As the voice faded, six figures stepped out from the trees.

Tang Yan fixed his eyes on them. The man at their head was broad and powerfully built, a long saber slung across his back and a curved bow in his hand. Those arrows just now had surely been his work.

Sensing their auras more closely, Tang Yan felt a flicker of surprise.

If he wasn't mistaken, the leader had reached Black Rank First Grade, while the rest fell somewhere between Yellow Rank Seventh and Yellow Rank Ninth Grade.

A group this strong was nothing he'd heard of back in Yun City. Were they from somewhere else?

"Qing Lang, what are you doing here?" the woman they'd called Miss Wan asked coldly.

"Wan Fei, you're a clever woman. You know exactly why I've come." Qing Lang chuckled, baring a mouthful of yellow teeth.

"Oh? Don't tell me you mean to steal Wan Fei's prey?" Wan Fei asked with a mocking smile.